358 PWENTY-SIXTH EVENING.

P. Certainly, or you could not know that it meant
Death. How is he represented f

C. He is nothing but bones, and he holds a scythe
in one hand and an hour-glass in the cther.

P. Well, how do you interpret these emblems ?

C. I suppose he 1s all bones, because nothing but
bones are left after a dead body has lain long in the
orave.

P. Truc. This, however, is not so properly an
emblem, as the real and visible effect of death. But
the scyther

C. Is not ikat because death mows down every
thing ?

P. It is. No instrument could so properly re-
present the wide wasting sway of death, which sweeps
down the race of animals, lke flowers falling under
the hand of the mower. It is a simile used in the
Scriptures.

C. The hour-glass, I suppose, is to show people
their time is come P

P. Right. In the hour-glass that Death holds,
all the sand is run out from the upper to the lower
part. Have you never observed upon a monument
an old figure, with wings, and a scythe, and with his
head bald all but a single lock before?

CO. O yes; and I have been told it is Teme.

P, Well—and what do you make of it? Why 1s
he old?

C. O! because time has lasted a long while.

P,. And why has he wings?

C. Because time is swift, and flles away.

P, What does his scythe mean ?

C. I suppose that is, because he destroys and cuts
lown everything, ike Death.

P, True. I think, however, a weapon rather slower
in ifs operation, as a pick-axe, would have been more
suitable to the gradual action of time. But what is
his single lock of hair for ?

C. | have been thinking, and caunot make % ong,